Has Anybody Been Threatened With God Lately?

Besides not-collecting-stamps, I spend much of my free time on the soccer field as a referee (I'm also a referee instructor during the winter.) If you've spent any time around sports, I'm sure you've seen some of the crap that gets thrown our way.

Last weekend, I was doing an Over 40 men's game that was verbally abusive almost from the get go. I ended up issuing a couple of yellow (caution) cards and red (ejection) cards when things started getting really out of hand. The game ended up being terminated at half time because of the brouhaha, one team's passes were kept, and the league is looking into the whole thing.

Anyway, mixed in among the 4-letter, 7-letter, and 12-letter epithets hurled was "God will take care of you!". It was not meant as a reassurance. I replied, "I don't believe in God" which totally surprised the player. Later, after he had some time to gather his wits while his teammates continued to lose theirs, he had added something about when I was saved by Jesus.

I've done hundreds of games and have been called some pretty obnoxious things, had my ethics questioned, been reminded that incompetence is not appreciated, and generally been characterized as an ignorant jerk whose badge probably came out of a cereal box.

But I've never been threated with God before. In fact, I don't think it's ever happened elsewhere in my life either.

I'm not talking about the well-meaning pity of "God [ loves / understands / cares ] and that you will eventually [ understand / repent / accept Jesus / etc. ]". But an actual threat of some kind of (unspecified) harm because my actions are so significant that God will notice them and deal with them.

Has anything similar happened to you? [I'm assuming, of course, that we've all been told at sometime that we are going to hell because of our non-belief so that doesn't count]?

Replies to This Discussion

I've been called an amoral baby raper for not believing in God, but I don't think I've ever been threatened with God before.

If I was I'm afraid I might just burst out laughing. Totally disrespectful, I know, but seriously, what's your imaginary friend gonna do? Give me coal for Christmas? And even if he did exist, do you really think he gives a shit about your petty problems?

Although my mom gave up trying to "re-catholic" me 20 years ago, I remember one of her arguments back then was "what are you going to do if you're standing before God?" My response, "Whatever mom." (I didn't feel like arguing with her.) She still goes to mass every day and prays for me.

Why bring Allah into it at all. I rather prefer to go H. G. Lovecraft on 'em and give 'em something to the effect of "May Cthulhu visit you in your dreams!" ... but at least three-quarters of those noodniks would have no idea of what I was referring to!

Used to be a volunteer escort at a women's clinic. We got told a lot about how God would judge us and punish us someday.

Most such drive-by evangelizing occurs when I'm at work. I'll tell the person, "Interesting you bring that up here, where you know I have to censor my responses. Meet me for dinner after work and I'll be happy to discuss God with you." Shockingly, no one has taken me up on that yet.

But if they did, a couple of responses come to mind:

"God's going to punish me for this? Which god is that: The Prince of Peace or the God of Love?"

"Of all the things God could put on his to-do list today - prevent a rape, cure a child's cancer, end war in Uganda - you honestly think he has nothing better to do than intervene in our little league soccer game? And you wonder why I don't believe in him?"

Haven't been threatened with "god" directly, but I've certainly been threatened with variations, like, "You're going to hell!" or "I'm gonna find where you live, hunt you down and send you straight to hell!", "I hope you burn in hell", "I'll send you straight to god mother****er."

... Having worked in tech support I've heard all sorts of death threats. I could probably write a book with them if I had written them all down. Someone needs to tell these people negative re-enforcement only works when I've actually done something wrong.

The death threats were usually issued before I had a chance to help them, and were ALWAYS religious in nature.

Then again, the customers I dealt with were from the red states in the US and were usually calling because they were too stupid to try restarting their computer or checking to see if the cables were actually plugged in at all.

Having worked as a PC Tech/resident handy-geek, I can totally relate. It's incredible how often the solution is "Restart the computer" or "Plug it in."

I've tried to stay away from general tech support for the reasons you're describing. I really don't feel like trying to explain to the angry, redneck, god-squad guy that his computer became incurable a long time ago, back when he couldn't be bothered to update his anti-virus or clean the beer spill and stack of newspapers on top of the PC.

A co-worker (a sweet lady) made a reference to god helping her through something and I replied that I do not have any religous beliefs. We got into a long, thoughtful discussion about what I believe (how can I stand not looking forward to heaven, etc.) that I felt was productive and at the end she said "I still like you anyway." I'm still wondering what to think of that comment.